On Whittingdale and the power of press silence

The ability of the British press to effectively suppress a scandal speaks volumes about the
dangers of concentrated media.

'White noise' by transmediale/Flickr. All rights reserved

Real press power resides in the ability
to suppress a scandal, at least as much as the ability to produce one. This is
the lesson we learn repeatedly when journalists, facing the combined pressures
of austerity, failing business models and an increasingly cautious and
interventionist management, decide
enough is enough. The latest in this new cadre of whistleblowers from inside
the fourth estate is Jim
Cusick, former political correspondent for TheIndependent. Like his former counterpart at TheTelegraph Peter Oborne, who resigned
amidst the appalling silence of his paper in the face of the tax scandal
embroiling HSBC (coincidentally, a major advertising account holder), Cusick
has pointed the finger at senior management – and an enduring Fleet Street
cabal – for strangling journalism at the Indie.

The merits of the suppressed
story itself – which centres on the alleged relationship between the culture
secretary, John Whittingdale, and a woman thought to be a sex worker and
fetishist – are certainly questionable. But not by Fleet Street standards. And
this is the crux of the matter for Cusick who suggests that the story wound its
way through successive newspapers with each title deciding against publication
not because they thought the allegations were baseless or not much of a story.
On the contrary, it was precisely because of the perceived ‘value’ of the
story, that editors and owners decided against publication. This provided the
blackmail stick that supposedly made Whittingdale an ‘asset’ for a newspaper
lobby hell-bent on destroying the BBC and the new system of press
self-regulation recommended by Lord Justice Leveson (and enshrined in Royal
Charter and law).

To be clear, Cusick offers little
to substantiate this cover-up, save a published email from his editor at the
Indie calling off the story for reasons undeclared. But his piece does alert us
to the wider question of what gets routinely left out of the mainstream media
agenda – including stories that are much less ambiguously in the public
interest than the not so lurid details of a politician’s private life. From
Google’s immersion
within the surveillance state to allegations of rampant corruption
and criminality within British American Tobacco – real scandals are often very
far from the front pages of major
newspapers or the headlines of broadcasters.

Peter Oborne. Credit: Tim GoodeOf course, sometimes a scandal
becomes too big for Fleet Street to ignore – even when it does not suit the
interests of powerful owners and editors, as when the Guardian revealed in 2011 that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler was
among the victims of phone hacking by journalists at the former News of the World. It is also true that
when the political climate is right, newspapers can go on the front foot in
exposing abuses of power at the heart of the political establishment. The
backdrop of a deep fracture in the conservative elite caused by the impending
EU referendum has certainly provided ripe conditions for the unprecedented
onslaught on David Cameron’s personal tax affairs by the right-wing press.

But we should also remain
vigilant to the way in which the story can be subtly told or retold in ways that ultimately play to elite
interests. So, for instance, when TheGuardian
and other newspapers partnered with Wikileaks in 2010 to publish a series
of secret US diplomatic cables, the headlines quickly became dominated by the
alleged sexual misdemeanours of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, rather than communiques
that suggested Britain’s long-running and controversial Iraq War Inquiry had
been systematically undermined by
government officials from the outset; or that legal loopholes had been
cynically exploited by British and American governments in order to maintain a
stockpile of US cluster bomb munitions on British territory; or that British
military personnel were involved in the training of a Bangladeshi paramilitary
group dubbed a ‘death squad’ by human
rights groups.

Optimists argue that none of this
stuff matters anymore because in the digital environment, one way or another, everything gets published all of the time. But it is precisely
because of such information noise that amplification – the ability to be heard­ – has become the major currency
of communicative power, and that power is still very much vested in the owners
of major news brands. And those who think their agenda or gatekeeping power has
been diminished by the rise of digital intermediaries should take one look at
Google’s most recent news algorithm patent update, which reveals
the degree to which it favours dominant, western media brands like “the BBC and
CNN”.

Others
argue that if there is any problem with media concentration in Britain today,
then it resides in the BBC’s dominance
of news consumption across broadcasting and digital platforms. From this
perspective, the mere existence of a national press, however partisan and
ideologically driven in its selection of news scandals, is a much-needed check
on the near monopoly status enjoyed by the BBC. Rather than worrying about the
agenda influence of mainstream media in general, commercial media lobbyists
argue that we should be concerned exclusively with the overarching reach and
influence that the BBC enjoys.

But
how far do the BBC’s own news selection decisions reflect or align with those of the commercial press? When scholars at Cardiff University
set out to investigate this question during the 2015 UK general election, they
found a very different picture to that often conjured by critics in the right-wing press. Rather than harbouring a liberal or left-wing metropolitan bias,
the BBC appeared to follow their story priorities, which in turn synched with
the Conservative Party campaign agenda. Just like the national newspapers, the
BBC’s coverage systematically marginalised stories relating to both the NHS and
immigration in favour of stories relating to the economy and the threat of
Labour-SNP coalition, two issues at the forefront of the Conservative Party
campaign. The extent of this agenda alignment was corroborated by other
research conducted at Loughborough
University and by the Media Standards Trust.

At a time when many public service
broadcasters around the world – including the BBC – are facing varying degrees
of existential crises, public debate is all too often reduced to a choice
between preservation or market-based reforms; with the latter usually amounting
to cutbacks or closures. What’s left off the policyagenda is the possibility of radical democratic reform aimed
at reconstituting the independence, accountability and internal plurality of
public service media. This is also an issue that is intimately tied to
questions of media ownership. The idea that a substantive section of any
democratic media system needs to be in public hands is one that retains a great
deal of force, in spite of the digital transition and corresponding end of
channel scarcity (which underlined the original rationale for public service
media). But the way in which public service broadcasters are structured,
regulated and governed can have profound implications for independence in
relation to both the state and market.

As for concentration in the wider
media – and especially the national and local press – the evidence
suggests that ownership still matters, in some ways more than ever. Far from
justifying inaction or inattention to media ownership, the complexities,
uncertainties and obscurities surrounding concentrated power in a converged
media environment make progressive media ownership rules more necessary and more urgent.
The rise of grassroots channels of resistance to mainstream media agendas has
produced a limited sea change but not a reason to refrain from tackling the
problem – more a basis for doing so. The need for reform of media plurality
rules has been a much talked about issue for some time now, and in many parts
of the world. But as digital news markets reach maturity and the political long
grass continues to grow, we need a groundswell of pressure from below, along
with politicians that have the courage to champion and act on policies that will
promote a genuine redistribution of voice and communicative power.

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